Monday Afternoon. It's Official. Rosie Starts On Her Thanksgiving Baking.

I have talked to my three children over the past 24 hours and asked each if there was anything special they would like me to make for them for Thanksgiving. Daughter Hawthorne and Middle Hawthorne both told me they'd get back to me on that issue. Youngest Hawthorne immediately answered, "Apple pie, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato pie." This, just after he'd finished off the apple pie I made the other day. OK. I get that pies are in order. But I will NOT make a sweet potato pie. I have a sweet potato casserole I make every year. It has a band of marshmallows and a band of pecans that intersect, so my picky children can have the marshmallows alone and the pecans alone, and the brave ones can have both together. Today, I made pie crusts. I'm OK with another apple pie. And a pumpkin pie. And I'm thinking about doing a pecan pie too. We'll just have to wait and see.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is a fool-proof recipe for pie crusts.

Ingredients for the pie crust: 4 cups flour 1 tsp salt 1 TB sugar 1 1/2 cups Crisco 1 egg 1 TB white vinegar 1/2 cup COLD water

I mixed the flour, salt, and sugar, then worked in the Crisco with a pastry blender. Just a little bit at a time.

Most pie dough recipes will tell you to cut the shortening in until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Un huh. Cut in with a pastry blender until you have all sorts of types of chunks. Big, medium, and little. All different sizes. I believe the different sizes make for a flakier pie crust.

Add in the beaten egg.

The vinegar (white).

And the Cold water. Work the mixture together. Then gather it into a mass ..

Wrap it in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before pie-plating it.

I rolled out 2/3 of the dough. Use flour to dust the board and the surface of the dough.

Roll it up on the rolling pin.

And roll out on the pie plate. Trim and crimp.

For the life of me,

I'm not a good crimper. My dough covered 1 deep dish pan (top left), a less deep pan (top right), and two shallow aluminum pans (bottom). I covered in plastic wrap and refrigerated, until ...